At about 7 p.m. that evening the man, who apparently had a quarrel with the parents of his fiancee and suffered from high fever, armed himself with a pisau belati (a large knife), entered their home, and killed his would-be father-in-law, while two women managed to escape unharmed.

When other villagers were alerted by the turmoil and rushed to the crime scene, the man turned against them, killing two, and wounding six more, three of them fatally, and afterwards fled into a narrow alley. Soon two police patrols were dispatched to the village, and when the first arrived under the command of the post office commander Prawirohardjo, the man lunged out of his hiding place and seriously wounded Prawirohardjo with a stab to the neck. In response to the attack one of the policemen killed him by splitting his skull with a klewang.[1][2][3][4][5][6]